A Security Architecture for Data Aggregation and Access Control in Smart Grids

The authors propose an integrated architecture for smart grids, that supports data aggregation and access control. Data can be aggregated by home area network, building area network and neighboring area network in such a way that the privacy of customers is protected. They use homomorphic encryption technique to achieve this. The consumer data that is collected is sent to the substations where it is monitored by Remote Terminal Units (RTU). The proposed access control mechanism gives selective access to consumer data stored in data repositories and used by different smart grid users. Users can be maintenance units, utility centers, pricing estimator units or analyzing and prediction groups. They solve this problem of access control using cryptographic technique of attribute-based encryption.